6 ms·

Considering the tone of these letters (especially the last one—wow!), it's a bit difficult to summon empathy with their authors. And I think that's unfortunate

by esk 15y ago

Considering the tone of these letters (especially the last one—wow!), it's a bit difficult to summon empathy with their authors. And I think that's unfortunate, because they have an exceedingly valid point—American universities are making a killing churning out graduates with very few relevant skills for today's economy. That's not to say these students are completely innocent—many, many American students view college as their "last gasp" of living without any real responsibilities, and they make make the most of that opportunity (rather than making the most of the opportunity to better themselves and prepare for today's economy). Now and forever, using only the internet, it's possible to learn... well, nearly everything. Once employers accept this, the cost of a degree will plummet, and universities will be forced to offer something well beyond what Wikipedia, web forums, and online instructional videos can provide. That's the only way they'll stay relevant and worth the investment. I think the universities can do it, but they are going to fight tooth and nail to avoid having to change. All large institutions do.

patio11 15y ago
This assumes that employers see value in colleges in terms of teaching and not, say, as outsourced pedigree verifiers which are socially permitted to discriminate along axes that employers are not permitted to. A degree from Harvard in Commercially Valueless Trivia with a minor in Not Comprehensible Outside Your Specialty and a thesis in Not Even Good Cocktail Conversation still tells employers that you were good enough to get into Harvard. (Or, more insidiously, that you're the kind of people who get into Harvard.)
- esk 15y ago
  You're right—employers are being lazy. It's safe for people in HR to mindlessly prefer mediocre Candidate A with a degree over stellar Candidate B without one, so instead of actually examining the values the candidates can bring to the company, they take the easy, defensible path. Part of the process of employers' recognizing that someone learning online can easily learn more than someone going to a university will be to empower HR departments to honestly examine candidates' value to the company rather than looking at increasingly irrelevant badges on their resume. In short, employers lazily prefer people with degrees. People want employment. People seek degrees. Universities see tons of demand and little pressure to improve, so they don't. Most graduates skills are irrelevant for today's employers, so they don't get hired. Employers can break this cycle by empowering their HR departments.
  - patio11 15y ago
    I think you are thinking of a fairly different phenomenon than I am thinking of. Let's take two candidates, A and B. A has a degree in Anime as Literature (a degree which fairly few people have but which is available if you want it from at least one university, and which we'll stipulate has fairly little commercial relevance in the United States) from, without loss of generality, Washington University in St. Louis (my alma mater). B has equivalent knowledge regarding postmodern interpretations of Evangelion but gained it all through self-study. You are describing that companies discriminate against B in favor of A because their hiring processes are broken and doing so is organizationally safe. I agree that in many cases their hiring processes are broken, but think that it doesn't matter because companies do not care about anime. It is utterly irrelevant to them. Knowledge of anime does not make you more efficient at filling out TPS reports. However, the degree from WashU brackets you as Top X% of Valued Quality Y distribution, where Y might be "intelligence" or "ability to follow through on moderately complex tasks with long time horizons" or simply "success in a highly selective process" if you're feeling charitable or "social standing" if you're not. Prospective employers aren't allowed to effectively discriminate based on intelligence (no, really), so they can use possession of a degree as a proxy for it. By comparison, the actual contents of the education received post-matriculation are irrelevant, so the fact that Candidate B has objectively equivalent knowledge of anime is not meaningful to the prospective employer.
    - m-photonic 15y ago
      >Prospective employers aren't allowed to effectively discriminate based on intelligence (no, really), so they can use possession of a degree as a proxy for it. Yep. Amy Wax has an excellent take on it here: "The combination of well-documented racial differences in cognitive ability and the consistent link between ability and job performance generates a pattern that experts term “the validity-diversity tradeoff”: job selection devices that best predict future job performance generate the smallest number of minority hires in a broad range of positions. Indeed, the evidence indicates that most valid screening devices will have a significant adverse impact on blacks and will also violate the 4/5 rule under the law of disparate impact. Because legitimately meritocratic (that is, job-related) job selection practices will routinely trigger prima facie violations of the disparate impact rule, employers who adopt such practices run the risk of being required to justify them – a costly and difficult task that encourages undesirable, self-protective behaviors and may result in unwarranted liability." Source: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1795443 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1795443
epistasis 15y ago
Regarding the last letter, I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg with regards to generational hatred for the Baby Boomers. Inheriting such a structurally messed up government and economy will not leave a good taste in people's mouth, and as times get desperate, having to pay large Social Security and Medicare entitlements to a generation that stopped investing in the future will become more and more questionable.
- tallanvor 15y ago
  I hate how people have latched onto using the term "entitlements" to discuss Social Security and Medicare and always say/write it as if it's a bad thing. Social Security and Medicare are earned benefits. People pay into the system through payroll taxes so that they receive a benefit based on the length of time they paid into the system and their salary. Much like a 401k or an IRA, the money is invested (albeit in government debt at low interest rates), and even now (well, maybe not with that idiotic payroll tax break they enacted) more money is going in than coming out.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    I think that's closer to being true for Social Security than Medicare. In particular, stuff like Medicare Part D is providing very expensive benefits for baby boomers which wasn't part of the original understanding of what they were paying for (and they haven't retroactively kicked in higher payroll taxes to make up for the cost).
  - goebbels 15y ago
    so when you pay into SS you don't become entitled to money?
  - anamax 15y ago
    > Social Security and Medicare are earned benefits. "Earned" maybe, but the relevant question is the relationship between the payments and the benefits. For some folks, it's a good/great return. For others, it's a lousy return. > the money is invested (albeit in government debt at low interest rates), and even now (well, maybe not with that idiotic payroll tax break they enacted) more money is going in than coming out. The problem is that current cash flow isn't the right way to determine whether such schemes are economically sound. For example, Ponzi schemes have good cash flow initially. The right way involves balancing the current "contributions" against the NPV of the benefits "promised". No, I'm not saying that SS is a Ponzi scheme. No one is forced to participate in a Ponzi scheme and the only folks who lose money in a Ponzi scheme are folks who bought into the promise.

by esk 15y ago

patio11 15y ago

This assumes that employers see value in colleges in terms of teaching and not, say, as outsourced pedigree verifiers which are socially permitted to discriminate along axes that employers are not permitted to. A degree from Harvard in Commercially Valueless Trivia with a minor in Not Comprehensible Outside Your Specialty and a thesis in Not Even Good Cocktail Conversation still tells employers that you were good enough to get into Harvard. (Or, more insidiously, that you're the kind of people who get into Harvard.)

esk 15y ago
You're right—employers are being lazy. It's safe for people in HR to mindlessly prefer mediocre Candidate A with a degree over stellar Candidate B without one, so instead of actually examining the values the candidates can bring to the company, they take the easy, defensible path. Part of the process of employers' recognizing that someone learning online can easily learn more than someone going to a university will be to empower HR departments to honestly examine candidates' value to the company rather than looking at increasingly irrelevant badges on their resume. In short, employers lazily prefer people with degrees. People want employment. People seek degrees. Universities see tons of demand and little pressure to improve, so they don't. Most graduates skills are irrelevant for today's employers, so they don't get hired. Employers can break this cycle by empowering their HR departments.
- patio11 15y ago
  I think you are thinking of a fairly different phenomenon than I am thinking of. Let's take two candidates, A and B. A has a degree in Anime as Literature (a degree which fairly few people have but which is available if you want it from at least one university, and which we'll stipulate has fairly little commercial relevance in the United States) from, without loss of generality, Washington University in St. Louis (my alma mater). B has equivalent knowledge regarding postmodern interpretations of Evangelion but gained it all through self-study. You are describing that companies discriminate against B in favor of A because their hiring processes are broken and doing so is organizationally safe. I agree that in many cases their hiring processes are broken, but think that it doesn't matter because companies do not care about anime. It is utterly irrelevant to them. Knowledge of anime does not make you more efficient at filling out TPS reports. However, the degree from WashU brackets you as Top X% of Valued Quality Y distribution, where Y might be "intelligence" or "ability to follow through on moderately complex tasks with long time horizons" or simply "success in a highly selective process" if you're feeling charitable or "social standing" if you're not. Prospective employers aren't allowed to effectively discriminate based on intelligence (no, really), so they can use possession of a degree as a proxy for it. By comparison, the actual contents of the education received post-matriculation are irrelevant, so the fact that Candidate B has objectively equivalent knowledge of anime is not meaningful to the prospective employer.
  - m-photonic 15y ago
    >Prospective employers aren't allowed to effectively discriminate based on intelligence (no, really), so they can use possession of a degree as a proxy for it. Yep. Amy Wax has an excellent take on it here: "The combination of well-documented racial differences in cognitive ability and the consistent link between ability and job performance generates a pattern that experts term “the validity-diversity tradeoff”: job selection devices that best predict future job performance generate the smallest number of minority hires in a broad range of positions. Indeed, the evidence indicates that most valid screening devices will have a significant adverse impact on blacks and will also violate the 4/5 rule under the law of disparate impact. Because legitimately meritocratic (that is, job-related) job selection practices will routinely trigger prima facie violations of the disparate impact rule, employers who adopt such practices run the risk of being required to justify them – a costly and difficult task that encourages undesirable, self-protective behaviors and may result in unwarranted liability." Source: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1795443 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1795443

epistasis 15y ago

Regarding the last letter, I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg with regards to generational hatred for the Baby Boomers. Inheriting such a structurally messed up government and economy will not leave a good taste in people's mouth, and as times get desperate, having to pay large Social Security and Medicare entitlements to a generation that stopped investing in the future will become more and more questionable.

tallanvor 15y ago
I hate how people have latched onto using the term "entitlements" to discuss Social Security and Medicare and always say/write it as if it's a bad thing. Social Security and Medicare are earned benefits. People pay into the system through payroll taxes so that they receive a benefit based on the length of time they paid into the system and their salary. Much like a 401k or an IRA, the money is invested (albeit in government debt at low interest rates), and even now (well, maybe not with that idiotic payroll tax break they enacted) more money is going in than coming out.
- _delirium 15y ago
  I think that's closer to being true for Social Security than Medicare. In particular, stuff like Medicare Part D is providing very expensive benefits for baby boomers which wasn't part of the original understanding of what they were paying for (and they haven't retroactively kicked in higher payroll taxes to make up for the cost).
- goebbels 15y ago
  so when you pay into SS you don't become entitled to money?
- anamax 15y ago
  > Social Security and Medicare are earned benefits. "Earned" maybe, but the relevant question is the relationship between the payments and the benefits. For some folks, it's a good/great return. For others, it's a lousy return. > the money is invested (albeit in government debt at low interest rates), and even now (well, maybe not with that idiotic payroll tax break they enacted) more money is going in than coming out. The problem is that current cash flow isn't the right way to determine whether such schemes are economically sound. For example, Ponzi schemes have good cash flow initially. The right way involves balancing the current "contributions" against the NPV of the benefits "promised". No, I'm not saying that SS is a Ponzi scheme. No one is forced to participate in a Ponzi scheme and the only folks who lose money in a Ponzi scheme are folks who bought into the promise.